Kintsugi // ATEEZ [Ishihara Sequel] ✔

39 Loyalty

Akira lets the door creak open, getting accustomed to the view she'll be presented with whenever she comes there. She looks to the back, this time doing something different than before.

"Close the door," Akira instructs the guards outside.

"But- Your Majesty," one of the guards looks hesitant. "We were given the orders to always leave the door open whenever you're inside."

"It's alright, he's still my husband anyway," she refutes. When the guard looks down, she merely smiles weakly. "Don't worry, you won't get in trouble. General Jeong will be the one to get in trouble if he ever tries to stop the queen," she tries to say it in a joking tone. "If I'm ever in trouble, you'll know when to enter and save me."

Although the guard looks hesitant and is slow to close the door, it's obvious whose words have a higher order as he bows his head before grabbing the door handle, sealing her off together with Seonghwa. She hates the fact that her mandate as the queen falls to a situation like this; something that shouldn't be there in the first place.

With the stacks of papers and Seonghwa's letter held firmly in her arms, she doesn't know what she expected when she decided to come here. Her husband remains the same; breathing but not alive, blinking but doesn't recognize. As she goes over to him, he follows her with his eyes but no sound, his back against the headboard, up to when she takes a seat beside his bed before putting down the stacks of papers on the bedside table.

"Are you still refusing to eat?" she asks, her hand taking the letter before she opens it up. "Just make a sound if you want to eat, I'll try to fix something for you." She pauses, "Even though I might not be the best cook around, I'll make something edible for you."

No response, merely the rise and fall of his chest as he stares at her.

She pushes her lower lip outwards. "I really don't know how your body... works. But I know you're in there somewhere, and you're listening to me now. That's why, I'll keep talking to you even though you say nothing. So that when you're cured later on..." she takes a long pause as it feels like an impossible feat, "...I'll make sure to annoy you by reminding you of the fact that I never gave up on you." She gives a weak smile, "Just like you didn't give up on me, because that's how marriages are supposed to work, right?"

She watches as he blinks slowly, hoping that maybe he'd try to communicate through his eyes. Instead, she can feel how the stare is only a blank one, how her words had no effects on him.

She straightens the letter in her hands, already knowing that she'll probably have to pause in the middle as she tries to gather her emotions. Even as she reads her name in his handwriting she already starts to feel how unstable her emotions will be. She reads the whole thing.

In the letter, he had complained about how his head hurt trying to find all the information, but wanted to prove that he could be a king that Lucida deserved. He detailed everywhere he went, up to the snacks he ate when he became hungry while digging through information. Then he kept repeating how he missed her, and how the first snow seemed that it would come down anytime soon so she would need to wake up and that they could catch it together. He told her everything she missed through the letter, saying that he badly wished she was right there beside him.

However, as she reads the last part of the letter, that is when her heart completely breaks.

I wanted to do all of this because I wanted to become the husband whom you can be proud of. I didn't want to be a burden to you, and I wanted to prove that I'm not wasting my position as the king. I did great, didn't I? Maybe... hearing the people of Lucida say that they're proud to have a king like me would be my wish one day. It may take a long time, but if we're in this together, we can get through it, can't we?